And we're back! To the guest who called this story crap. You know what? I don't care. It hurt before but then my friend helped me realize how sad it was that that is all you could say...and not even give a reason. I would love to see what you're reasoning is for why this story is 'bad'. So please, sign into your account or make one so we, as in my friend and I, can talk to you about it. Anyways! This one is a bit shorter and I had nothing to do with it. This was all 30CaliberDonut. We're about to meet Master number 4 as well as her Servant.
Chapter III
The dull roar of the Boeing 777's engines drenched the cabin. Many of the passengers were asleep; Malaysia Airlines MH690 had taken off at 8PM from Kuala Lumpur, headed towards Beijing. it was the dead of night; the flight attendants hadn't been down the aisle in over an hour. There was no point, given the time.
It was the perfect opportunity.
The woman that unbuckled her seatbelt stood up then from an aisle seat just outside the first class cabin was dressed entirely in black. She wore her long, stark black hair in a stylish but utilitarian ponytail; she wore tight-fitting cargo pants, combat boots, and a black bolero over a tight, black t-shirt. Stark, hooded eyes - so dark a brown they almost seemed black - took a glance around the cabin; yes, the lack of attention now would suit her nicely.
She made her way forward, towards the first-class cabin. She peeled off, into the restroom, locking the door behind her. She looked at herself in the mirror, for just a moment. She tilted her head to one side; a joint in her neck popped. Then, she grabbed a roll of toilet paper, wadded a long swathe of it around her fist, and - without hesitation - smashed the mirror.
It did not take long for someone to come knocking on the door; no doubt a nearby passenger had heard the commotion and reported it. A knock came through the door, followed by a voice, speaking Mandarin:
"Is everything okay? Are you alright in there?"
By the time the knock had sounded, however, the dead-eyed woman had already pulled a black case from a custom fitting behind the mirror. Shedding her bolero and unlatching the case, she retrieved a shoulder holster, a flak vest, a Ka-Bar combat knife, an FN Five-seveN, five 5.7mm handgun magazines, two proprietary 5.7mm submachine gun magazines, and an FN P90. She slotted a magazine into the two-handed weapon and racked the slide.
The stewardess on the other side had never held a gun before, but she backed away in terror regardless. Before she could so much as touch the opposite bulkhead, however, the woman barreled through the lavatory door. She shoved the stewardess against the wall, covering her mouth, and pointed the P-90 with one hand down the aisle. There were startled gasps from what few passengers were awake and cognitive enough to understand what was happening, but the woman simply put a finger over her lips.
"Let's not disturb those who are asleep, yes?"
There was a pregnant silence. The woman took that as acquiescence. She pushed the stewardess back into the aisle, spun on her heel, and vanished through the curtain into first class.
She completely ignored the passengers in the final cabin before the cockpit; she had only told the ones behind her to be silent so that no one tried to stop her before she reached the front end of the plane. As she approached the locked door, she raised her weapon, and fired two rounds; the armor-piercing bullets shredded through the lock; the magic circuits in her hands glowed brightly as she reinforced her hands, and she wrenched the door open. Both pilots spun around in shock as she took a single step into cockpit; the started to rise, but she jammed the weapon into his face, drawing her handgun with her other hand to keep both of them covered.
"We're changing the flight plan, just a little," she announced. "Do what I say, the worst that will happen is you will be four hours late to your destination. Do you understand?"
Both pilots nodded.
"Good," she responded, and she shut the door again behind her.
Two hours later, the woman looked at the plane controls. It was time; they were approaching her stop.
"Thank you for your cooperation, gentlemen," she deadpanned. "Now, you're going to turn on the seatbelt sign, announce that everyone on board needs to take their seats and strap in. It's going to be bumpy for a short time."
With that, she plied the door open again, grabbed and donned a parachute and goggles from the nearest overhead bin, waited for the announcement, then ratched the open the door. The cabin depressurized, but only for a moment; the woman slammed the door shut as she threw herself out and away from the aircraft and into the dead of night. A minute later, she plunged through the cloud line, and the hellscape that had been the city of Fuyuki opened up beneath her.
Finally, she thought, and she yanked the ripcord.
When she landed, she found herself amidst the ruins of what must have been a lovely, cozy temple. All that remained of it now were its foundations; that, and the red arch that had miraculously survived the disaster that had devastated the city. The news had reported that it had been a cataclysmic fire, but Yen Nguyen knew better. The calamity was not something as trivial as a mere fire.
This was the inevitable outcome of the Holy Grail War. And she was here to stop it from happening again.
A brief trek to the east revealed a lake. From what she had heard, this was where the Grail had begun to obliterate everyone and everything in the city. It was no longer recognizably a lake; now, it looked like a hill of molten sludge. Yen padded carefully towards it, making sure not to touch it, at first, but her investigations were going nowhere without the ability to determine what all of this was. Eventually, she approached one of the only trees that had not completely burned down, and plucked a twig from it. The tree was dead; the twig would burn nicely, if the sludge was what caused the fire.
Gingerly she threw the stick into the substance that had covered the lake, and - to her surprise - it bounced off the surface, as though she had tossed it onto hardened concrete. If this was in fact the source of the fire, it seemed to have solidified; it reminded her of molten rock. That would serve her purposes, for now; she could get closer to what seemed to be ground zero, at least.
As she stepped out onto the uneven surface of the lake, her foot brushed against something. She looked down, and her eyes widened just a little.
She knew that what happened here was nothing short of an unmitigated catastrophe. She had expected to find a plethora of bodies, disfigured in cruel and unusual ways. She did not, however, expect to see what she found then.
A hand - rather, what was left of one - protruded just a little ways from the surface, in such a way that it would have been invisible unless she stepped up onto the hardened mud. The hand itself, however, was not what had caught her eye. It appeared to hold something. Whatever it was, it gleamed in the moonlight; it seemed difficult for Yen to believe that a piece of jewelry had survived the disaster, but she could not doubt her eyes: the hand held what appeared to be a silver chain. She knelt to inspect it; it seemed to be stuck in the mud; she could not see the entire thing. Yanking the combat knife from its sheath at the small of her back, she began to dig, being careful to look for signs that the horrid substance could become active again. After ten minutes of carving and prodding, Yen managed to fish the trinket from the mud. When she saw its complete, undamaged form, she could not help but permit a small gasp to escape her lips.
The gem that the chain was attached to was indubitably magical in nature; certainly that was the only reason that it could have been unscathed after all that had happened. But the implications of such a jewel, here, were of greater concern. If there was a pendant constructed from raw mana here, in Fuyuki…
It could only mean that the body over which Yen stood was a Master in the Fifth Grail War. More than that, a jewel mage… this could be none other than Tohsaka Rin. So it was true; the Tohsaka lineage was exterminated in the Fifth War. Yen grimaced; this was a cruel fate for such a family, indeed. In spite of that, she found herself reviewing her knowledge of history. She knew that coming here with the paltry relic that she had acquired had been more than a risk; she knew she would have to rely on her wits more than the power of her Servant, were she to summon the one she had prepared for. Something else, however, now nagged at the back of her mind. She had once noted something about the Tohsaka family that had intrigued her, once upon a time; what could it have been?
That was it. Their relationship with the Zenjou family. Several mage families in the area had used the Zenjou's unparalleled ability to breed mages throughout the generations. She continued to ponder the possibilities. Zenjou… the name rang a bell, from another direction. She remembered reading the name, somewhere else.
When she realized the connection, she started. The Zenjou family… and their ancient relationship with a revered Samurai. This was not an opportunity she could waste. With the knife, she began to dig around the hand, in an attempt to free the body. The hand had nearly been destroyed, but what with the way the mud had hardened, it seemed likely that there was something beneath it preserved.
It was a long, arduous process, but Yen persevered. Two hours later, she had excavated as much as she was going to manage.
Tohsaka Rin's body was nearly unrecognizable. The limbs had not merely been burned down to the bone; the bones had been fused together, which was the only way that they had retained any shape at all. Her face - which must have been contorted in the utmost of agony and despair when she had died - was almost completely gone. She was, however, mummified slightly, which bode well for Yen's endeavors.
Yen laid the body at her feet when she had freed it from the mud. She laid it at her feet, and knelt over it.
"I'm sorry," she said, unsure if she meant it, or if she was participating in some pointless ritual; it simply felt right at the time. "You've been through enough. But you have one final task. Please help me with this. I'm sure you would approve."
With that, she cut what remained of Tohsaka Rin's throat.
The blood that poured forth was just enough to craft a magic circle. Yen wasted no time. She piled some of the crusted mud that she had dug up into a makeshift altar in front of the circle, severed one of Rin's charred hands, and placed it on top. With that, she announced aloud:
"Let silver and steel be the essence. Let stone and the archduke of contracts be the foundation. Let rise a wall against the wind, that shall fall. Let the four cardinal gates close. Let the three-forked road from the crown reaching unto the Kingdom rotate.
Fill, fill, fill, fill, fill. Let it be filled five times for every turn, and tear asunder each time. I declare here: your body shall serve me, and my fate shall rest with your sword. Submit to the beckoning of the Holy Grail; if you would acknowledge this will and reason… then answer!"
The blast of mana that occurred then nearly knocked Yen off her feet; she did not retreat, she merely braced herself against it and continued.
"An oath shall be sworn here! I shall attain all the virtues of Heaven! I shall have dominion over all of the evils of Hell! From the Seventh Heaven, attended to by the three great words of power, come forth from the ring of restraint… Guardian of the Holy Balance!"
The magic circle erupted into a burst of light; Yen shielded her eyes from the overwhelming blaze. And as suddenly as it appeared, the light was gone. Yen cracked her eyes open just a little, adjusting to the return of the darkness. Then, her eyes shot open.
"What?!"
As expected, a Servant had appeared. She had expected to summon a great warrior, a famous legend. So… what was this supposed to be? The Grail's idea of a joke?
The girl that stood in the magic circle now wore a stony expression, not unlike the one that usually graced Yen's own face. Her long, black hair was done into childish pigtails and bangs, decorated with feathers and golden ribbons. But the rest of her outfit was even more perplexing: her arms and legs were shielded by metal, traditional plate armor, painted white and decorated with black areas adorned by golden spots. Her sleeves were long and flowing, but they did not obscure her gloved hands, which wielded a katana with a black and red haft, decorated by an ornamental crimson tassel, sheathed in a scabbard that was done up to look like a tanuki's tail.
But what threatened to shove Yen's eyebrow clear into her hairline was the rest of her outfit… or, rather, the lack thereof. Tiny armored plates hung down from her collar, only barely obscuring her chest, and what Yen could have sworn was a crimson bikini bottom preserved what would have been a serious breach in dignity. Yen could no longer contain her bewilderment.
"Who… are you supposed to be?!"
"I am am your Saber-class Servant, Minamoto no Yoshitsune! I have been called upon. Honoring my devotion as a Samurai to the fullest, I will do my best for you, Master!"
Yen's mouth fell open slightly.
"No… way."
I'm not allowed to say who Yen is...I was told not to so I'm not gonna spoil it. We're using Servants from Fate that are given, such as Jeanne, Ushi and our Berserker, but also those who weren't, such as Ben-Hur. Next we go back to Jeanne and Tori...and see what mischief those two are going to end up in.
Anyway, hope you liked it. If you did, please let me know!
Qui vállë tóquetë, ván tecë (If no review comes from y'all; no story comes from me)
Máriessë ar mára tecië
Farewell and fair writing
Elhini Prime signing off.